Liping Feng, MD received a $50,000 Duke MEDx Biomedical Research Funding award for her proposal “The development of a novel platform mimicking the human placental barrier.”
"Our in vitro model of human placenta barrier can closely mimic the in vivo conditions and provide a novel platform for a wide variety of applications. Applications include studying placenta nutrition exchange, infection/inflammation, and immune regulation," says Feng. "These applications will ultimately provide insights for pathogenesis of pregnancy complications through investigating and understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms such as the mechanisms of in utero transmission of Zika Virus and HIV," she continued.
This MEDx Biomedical Research award is given to researchers with novel pilot projects that investigate a basic biomedical question or for the development of tools or technologies that enable biomedical discovery. The pilot projects are in collaboration between faculty members in the Pratt School of Engineering and the School of Medicine.
MEDx is leading a syndicate comprising the School of Medicine, the Duke Cardiovascular Research Center, and the Departments of Pathology, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, and Biomedical Engineering that award funding to promote the formation of new collaborations between faculty in the Schools of Medicine and Engineering.
We are extremely proud of Dr. Feng and look forward to the results of this important research.